A Certain Age (6 page)

What a brilliant tool Photoshop is. [
Keypad and mouse noises
] That’s a nice one. Hello, Mister Lister! Ooh, that’s a very nice mauve cardigan shot, if I say so myself. I’ll have that. [
Tap. Mouse
] And enlarge. [
Tap. Mouse
] Lovely. Of course, this is the point in the movie when the guy says, “Hold it! What’s this strange shining mark to the right of Mister Lister’s head? Jeepers, I’d better call an archbishop!” Whereas in fact there
IS
a spooky light area, obviously, in every single one of these shots, but if I just – [
mouse clicks and scrolls
] airbrush it – [
more clicks
] like this – [
more clicks
] and that – [
more clicks
] Hey presto. The telltale spooky shining mark has gone!

I went to see Kippo straight after the job yesterday. Went back to the office and asked him to take me off the mediums. I mean, it’s not that I’m not interested. It was really nice hearing from my dad like that. I told Mum about it, and she said, well, if you get him again, could you please ask him what he did with the key to the coal-shed
because we’ll have to break the door down sooner or later. No, the problem was working with Jules. She called me up when I was driving back and said, all urgently, “Look, Mark, we have to talk—” And the trouble was, I know her well enough to know where that was leading. I mean, nothing romantic, nothing like that. When our little thing finished a year or two ago, we agreed – well, we agreed we’d been lucky to get away with it, so leave it at that. It wasn’t as if our paths would ever cross professionally, what with me lurking round the Old Bailey with the other snappers doing my impersonation of a salmon leaping upstream, and her in hotel lobbies hypocritically sucking up to film idols. I don’t think either of us minded very much about splitting. We did quite suit each other, though. I mean, you know. For a woman, she’s not exactly deep.

How we managed to keep it totally quiet I don’t know, but we did. Amazing. I mean, it was obvious yesterday that Kippo had no idea, for a start, and Kippo is the biggest gosser on the staff; it was him that first sussed the two-jacket ploy that old sports editor invented twenty years ago: leaving the spare jacket on the back of the chair mid-morning as if he’d just popped to the canteen for a packet of fruit gums, and then legging it to the Waldorf to meet that woman from the Football Association. Anyway, the point is, I couldn’t tell Kippo the real reason I didn’t want to do the job, could I? So I told him about my dad’s message and how it had turned out to be uncannily completely accurate.

“You see?” I said. “I didn’t sign up to be a press photographer so that I could have supernatural experiences, Kippo. I did it for the cash and the chicks and the Saab and for the incredibly long lenses, and for a nickname ending in ‘o’.”

Kippo thought about it. He didn’t look convinced. “Well, if your dead father is going to send you messages, Marko, it would be great for the piece.”

[
Groan
] I’d been really hoping he wouldn’t say that. It was exactly what Jules had said when she phoned me up. People who work on newspapers always just want the
STORY;
it’s a bit depressing, if you ask me. “We can
USE
your dad, if he’s going to come through like this!” she said. “I could interview him from beyond the grave!” I could see her thinking, Broadsheet Stuck-up Feature Writer of the Year 2005, here I come.

“Kippo!” I said.

“I think you should do the two on Wednesday—”

“TWO?”
I said.

“Do the two on Wednesday and see what happens, Marko. That dry-cleaning ticket thing was obviously just a way of convincing you that it was really him.”

I didn’t say anything. It had never occurred to me that it wasn’t really Dad. Why on earth would Mister Lister pretend he had a message from my dad?

“You got on well with your dad, didn’t you, Marko?”

“Well, my dad got on with everybody. He was a nice bloke.”

“You think everyone’s a nice bloke.”

His phone rang.

“Juliet Frampton isn’t,” I muttered, darkly.

And he laughed and said, “Yeah, but that didn’t stop you banging her for two years twice a week at that flat in Broadwick Street, did it? No such thing as a secret, Marko. Hello, picture desk.”

Scene Three: in the car again, but stationary with the windscreen wipers going

[
Sigh; shiver
] I’m beginning to feel like that bloke in
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).
Using my gigantic powers of deduction, I think I must be Randall. Oh come on, Juliet. If I’ve got to drive you back into town, you might get a move on! Look at that rain! Tell you what, these jeans are soaked from lying on that grass to get the shot through the patio doors.

I’d better not mention
Randall and Hopkirk
to Juliet. But it’s that TV thing from the sixties with the two detectives where one of them dies and then comes back to help in the investigations. They remade it recently with Vic Reeves. The point is, the dead one is invisible to everyone except his old partner, so he can shout helpful things like, “He’s behind you, Jeff!” and, “He’s got a gun, Jeff!” And sometimes, if he blows really, really hard, he can make a curtain billow or a candle go out. It’s quite entertaining, but as my dad used to say when we watched the re-runs, it’s hardly an ennobling vision of the afterlife. I mean, in the past, people dreaded death for respectable reasons like hell and purgatory, where at least there was an element of personal improvement involved. You were kind of purified in the flames. Whereas now – well. Even more reason to dread death if all you do afterwards is hang around shouting, “You’re about to fall in a hole! Can you hear me? You’re about to fall in a – You see? You fell in a hole!”

Sorry, it’s been a strange day. These jeans are really sticking to me now. And Jules is being
AWFUL.
She rang me again last night, with a plan this time, about how we could sort of trap my dad into becoming the focus
of this piece of hers. “It could be like a Day in the Life!” she said. “Only with the difference that he’s not alive!” I thought quickly about what to say. I didn’t come up with much. “You still fancy me, don’t you, Jules?” I said. And she said, “What’s that got to do with anything?” And I said, “I knew it!” But she wasn’t so easily sidetracked, unfortunately. She was beginning to see my dad as her key to fame. Any objections on my part wouldn’t really bother her. So when we went into the house and met these two, well, you could only call them witch-ladies, I made a point of going straight out into the garden, where I took a few lying-down shots of the house with a yellow filter to make the sky look scary. But I didn’t get away with it for long. I was just texting Kippo a lengthy joke about a bloke whose car breaks down in the Arctic Circle when one of the witch-ladies came out and said I had to join them at once. I’d been there for all of eight minutes, and she and her friend had been bombarded with messages for me; [
falsetto
] “Like psychic spam!” she said. “Ah,” I said.

Jules was looking all expectant when I got back in, although she curled her lip a bit at the wet trousers. “Mark and I are developing an interesting relationship,” she trilled. “A bit like Salieri and Mozart. Mark is the one singled out for all this supernatural attention, you see, but he doesn’t appreciate how special it is. Whereas I understand its importance, and all I can do is watch.” They looked baffled. “Plus I think she wants to kill me,” I said.

So, here were the messages I got from my dad. I can hardly wait to hear what Jules thought of them all.

One. Someone is breaking into your car. (This was true. I ran outside and chased them off.)

Two. The Chelsea starting line-up tonight will be the first ever premiership side to contain no English players.

Three. Being dead is a bit boring, so remember to take multivitamins.

Four. Why do you keep airbrushing me out of all your pictures?

Five. There never was a key to the coal-shed. Just kick it on the side and the door springs open.

Six. You’re right, son. She does still fancy you.

Oh God.

Scene Four: driving back from Middlesbrough

Go on, then, mate, overtake, that’s right. Little wave wouldn’t hurt, would it? Good.

[
Sigh
] We did our last one today. Middlesbrough. There were supposed to be three more; we were supposed to be heading north tomorrow, but I’m going home. Shame about the match at the Riverside. Johnners had not only got me an armband, he’d got me a kip for the night and all.

We had to see this woman today, you see, Jane Starling, her name is, she helps the police with their inquiries and has a framed letter on the mantelpiece from the Strathclyde Constabulary acknowledging her assistance in finding bodies and weapons and caches of gold bullion. And she wasn’t a bit like the others; she was really abrupt and businesslike. She was even quite hostile when we arrived. Especially towards me. [
Geordie accent
] “I don’t want
HIM
in here, pet,” she said, without even looking at me properly. “He’s draining all me psychic energy and he’s hardly got his foot through the front door, like.” Of
course, I said, [
cheerful; relieved
] “Okey dokey; your house!” and was halfway back to the car, but Jules dragged me back in, saying, “Oh, Mark has that effect on everyone! [
Laugh
] Half an hour in his company and most people lose the will to live!”

Hang on, where are we? Junction 24. Bloody hell, that’s not far. I’ll have to take a rest in a minute. I’ll be doing the rest of this in the dark as it is.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I reckon the problem with this Jane Starling woman is that nobody believes in her in the normal run of her life. They think she’s some kind of fraud. Hence the peculiar aggression at the outset.

“Remember the Pammy Babcock case?”

“No.”

“Well, it was me who found that hairbrush!” [
He doesn’t react
]

“Remember the Glasgow bullion robbery?”

“Er, no.”

“It was me who told them to focus on a grey van with the number seventeen on the licence plate.” It was a bit tiring, all this, and I could see Jules was starting to get fed up with her, so she said, very carefully, “Mrs Starling, I haven’t come here to judge you in any way, or test you. I just want to talk to you about your gift. And if you have any messages for either of us, that would be marvellous. We have had a few messages recently from Mark’s dad, but they’ve been a bit – well, to be honest, they’ve been a bit banal.”

Mrs Starling shrugged. Since most of the messages she received were about hairbrushes and licence plates, she was hardly likely to be sympathetic. But Jules was insistent. I was sitting next to her on the sofa. “If you manage to
speak to Mark’s dad first,” said Jules, “could you impress on him that what we’d really like –” I don’t know where the “we” came from, but anyway – “what we’d really like is something a bit less to do with, well, sport, or missing keys, or cleaning tickets, that sort of thing.”

“Right, pet,” said Mrs Starling, but she didn’t look happy.

I grabbed a couple of shots of the room while we were waiting.

[
Long pause
] “Anything?” Jules said.

I took some more shots.

[
Long pause
] “Anything yet?”

“Well – no.” [
Pause
] “Er—”

[
Breathless
] “Yes?” Jules was so excited she dug her nails into my knee.

“I’m not sure. It’s to do with the new
Doctor Who
, like.”

Jules thumped my knee with her fist. “No!” she said. “Ow!” I said.

“Right,” said Mrs Starling.

Jules glared at me as if all this was my fault. I just shrugged. I really wanted to hear the
Doctor Who
news. In fact, I was just about to stop all this and ask Mrs Starling to go back a bit, when she gave up anyway.

“It’s no good, pet. All I can get is some stuff about Christopher Eccleston, the winner of the 3.30 at Doncaster, a reminder that the clocks go forward at the weekend, and the words, ‘He’s behind you, Jeff!’, which he says you’ll understand.”

Jules nearly screamed, but I took a more rational position. I looked at the clock. It was just after three. “It wasn’t Laughing Dingo, was it? In the 3.30?”

“It was, pet. How did you know that?”

“Well, he was rubbish last time out, so that would be very interesting, you see.”

Jules said, “Please shut up, Mark. [
Gritted teeth
] Anything else, Mrs Starling?”

[
Pause
] “Oh yes. He’s fifteen to one, like!”

“No, I mean, anything else besides the racing tip.”

“Oh. Well, no.”

And then the phone rang and Mrs Starling positively shot out of her chair to answer it. We heard her in the hall. [
Relief
] “Chief Inspector!” she said. “You’ve no idea how pleased I am to hear from you!”

Jules and I sat there together in silence. I knew she was angry with my dad, but I didn’t see what I could do about it. I wondered whether to tell her the joke about the man in the Arctic with the Inuit AA, but decided to carry on texting it to Kippo instead. In the hall, Mrs Starling was saying things like,
“HOW
many fingers did you say, Inspector? Mm, well, I’ve never worked with less than the full hand, but there’s a first time for everything!” In the end, of course, just as I sent my text to London, Jules spoke first.

“You know those messages at the witch-ladies’, Mark? What did your dad mean about you airbrushing your pictures?”

I’d been hoping she hadn’t remembered that. I got the big Nikon out of the bag and held it up for her to see the screen on the back. [
Matter-of-fact
] “I have to get rid of these shiny lights all the time, that’s all.” I brought up one of the Mister Lister pictures and pointed to the corner. A spot of silvery light. “There,” I said. I scrolled through half a dozen more. “See? It’s there. There. There. Bit of a nuisance, that’s all.” I looked at Jules. I knew it: she was impressed.

“This couldn’t be a defect in the camera?” she said.